Daily Star running live stream that asks: 'Can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?'

When Liz Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turned on her key policy to raise corporation tax, she wanted to establish authority and shore up her crisis-hit government.

However, with furious Tory MPs reportedly plotting to replace her, there is already a sense the prime minister’s premiership may be reaching its end point - after just 38 days.

Even by the standards of major disruption in UK politics over recent years, it’s an extraordinary narrative.

And perhaps the best way of capturing that has been courtesy of the Daily Star, which has made light of the crisis by launching a YouTube live stream asking: “Can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?”

The stream consists of a table with a picture of Truss next to an actual lettuce, with the Star asking if Truss will still be PM within the 10-day shelf life of the lettuce.

Watch: Liz Truss abruptly ends press conference as she's asked 'aren't you going to apologise?'

More than 2,000 people were watching the video just after 4pm on Friday.

In recent years, the Star has become notorious for its irreverent takes on UK politics and politicians. One cover of its print edition earlier this year depicted Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak as Pinocchios after they were fined by police amid the Partygate scandal.

Another front page, in May 2020 at the height of the scandal surrounding Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Barnard Castle, carried a cut-out mask of Cummings with the text: “FREE: Do whatever the hell you want and sod everybody else mask.”

Now, Truss faces the prospect of her premiership playing out next to a decomposing lettuce.

The lettuce live stream is the least of Truss’s worries, though. The Times has reported one unnamed MP as saying “I am ashamed to be a Tory at the moment.”

On Friday, it also carried an opinion piece by Daniel Finkelstein, a leading conservative commentator and Tory member of the House of Lords, saying Truss now has no mandate and should resign.

Sky News, meanwhile, has reported mutiny on a WhatsApp group of Tory backbenchers, with one, Crispin Blunt, calling for Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt to replace her and provide “emergency repair”.

Read more: 'I've got cheese that's lasted longer': Ridicule as Kwarteng sacked as chancellor

And the BBC quoted another Tory MP as saying Truss's short press conference on Friday, in which she delivered the U-turn on corporation tax, was the worst they had seen in 15 years.

Asked at the press conference if she should resign, Truss said: “I am absolutely determined to see through what I have promised.”